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Drone Hobbyists Find Flaws In 'Close Call' Reports
An anonymous reader writes: The people and agencies pushing for strict drone regulation have no trouble coming up with a list of dangerous drone-related incidents. This includes not only the recent drone crashes that have been picked up by the media, but also reports of "close calls," where drones have allegedly approached full-size aircraft. But a new study by drone hobbyists finds that most of these "close calls" were anything but. Of 764 such incidents reported to the FAA, only 27 were actually described as "near misses" by the pilots involved. None of the incidents involved mid-air collisions, and some have involved military drones rather than hobbyist ones. The people who did the study suggest that we should find a better way of classifying these drone-related situations so legislators have accurate information from which to design regulations.
hey I was near a half mile or a mile away. Or even two miles away. The airline pilots are saying - get the hell out of my way.
First, how the hell can something two miles distant be in your way? Christ, you can't even see a drone from two miles.
Second, RTFA. The FAA is classifying pilot reports of model rockets and buzzards as civilian drone near misses, as well as military drones and unidentified objects at altitudes impossible for hobby and commercial UAVs to reach.
I can see the fnords!
You obviously didn't read TFA... the pilots reporting the incidents are making the distinction between "close call" and "near miss", not the hobbyists behind the report.
The approach speed of a 747 is somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 MPH.
A drone is a meter across at best (at least the ones they are whining about) and doesn't fly anywhere near 200MPH
No way a pilot is going to see some drone off to their side. It would have to be an almost head on collision to even have a chance to see it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Just as soon as the average bird is made of hard plastic, metal, and possibly flammable/explosive lithium ion batteries, your comparison will be reasonable and accurate.
Yes, bird strikes happen. They can be quite dangerous - the widely reported-on landing of US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009 (the so-called "Miracle on the Hudson") was caused by a couple bird strikes that caused the engine to fail. They're very risky for pilots and passengers, and they DO make airliners plunge from the sky. We can't "regulate" bird strikes out of existence unless we want to engage in wholesale slaughter of every species of bird in existence. We CAN, however, regulate drones, and thus vastly reduce the possibility of a drone strike taking down a plane.
Now, why don't you explain to us why a drone strike is magically NOT a risk to commercial aircraft, just because you think you have some sort of inalienable right to fly your little quad copter anywhere your heart desires?
Perhaps because birds are not loaded down with lithium ion batteries, carbon fiber arms and potentially rotors, or even magnesium fittings, much less the rather dense lumps of copper and other crap that is a modern motor. A bird is essentially meat and bone. A drone is rather denser in it's main body, and is made from harder materials. You can eat a leg of turkey, but not a spanner. Planes already have trouble with birds, and many attempts are made to keep them away. Now drones, which are piloted by people with intelligence (not much of it it seems, but some), are causing problems, and it's a good deal easier to deal with people than with birds.